I really like the angle you take here. One thing that really annoyed me too was the constant swapping of party members. I'm one of those people that likes to train my characters to the point where they can comfortably handle any situation. I'm so obsessive compulsive that I must always have the best equips.

I felt like all my hard work went down the toilet every time someone I spent time and money on suddenly left. What's worse, I remember buying better equips for Yang, yet he has lousy equips when he re-joins. What a waste.

As you said, the game is relatively easy, but at the same time it never lets you get a firm foothold until you get your true team right at the end.

I rather liked the constant switching of FF4, and the game as a whole, but I appreciate a review from the other side of the coin!

I will agree that the final dungeon is epic. Every time I reach it, I place the game down for several months before getting up the courage to approach and beat it.

Have you tried the DS version of this game? The final dungeon is SO FUCKING HARD.

I never found FF4, or any of the FF's really, to be very easy but that's probably because I only play the games on non-wait mode, so that enemies attack even as you're browsing menus. I also set the battle speed, if available, at maximum. Doing this, some of the bosses, and even regular enemies, in FF4 become near impossible. You have to get your timing down perfect in order to beat them and set up your menus so that your best spells are all at the top and be prepared to cast haste and protect a lot.

It gets nuts inside Babel's Tower and positively insane in the final dungeon.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

That final dungeon is insane. When I played this version of FF IV back in the day, it was super-crazy for me. I rented the game, so I had it for a Thurs-Fri-Saturday combo. I'd made it a good ways in during those first two days, not really breaking a sweat. On Saturday, I realized I was making great progress and had nothing going on that day, so I essentially wound up playing from about noon until 4 a.m. non-stop except for a break to get something for dinner. Due to rushing through things, I was probably a bit unleveled for the final dungeon. It was amazing how few optional bosses I fought. I remember beating Ogopogo in what might have been the toughest fight I'd ever won. I remember giving up against Plague (or whatever Ahriman, General, etc. was called in this game) and being afraid to open treasure chests because it seemed many treasure chest fights were about as brutal as the ones in the ruins of that one castle are IF you go there the instant you get whatever mode of transportation you need to get there. The final boss fight was probably the easiest part of that dungeon...and my frickin' strategy for that was simply to have Cecil batter it, someone (Rosa, I think) heal him and the other three were expendable meat, as I didn't have the resources to keep everyone alive.

In some ways, this review is the opposite of Zipp's. This one is quite short and to the point without going into much detail about the story or anything else except those things that bring down the game's playability. I remember liking this review when I first read it, and I still like it now. The main antagonism with the game appears to be the party system, which, sounds pretty lousy until you actually get the permanent set.

At the same time, I felt like the lack of detail hurt in some ways, but I'm not the feeling isn't so overwhelming as to be particularly detrimental. I imagine you intentionally brushed over story details to prevent spoiling things for the general reader as well as to illustrate that you found other elements (like the dwarven underground thing) more important, so whether I would have liked to see maybe a little bit more of that doesn't really matter.

In any case, I have some thinking to do before I decide who'll win this. It'll be a close one either way, that's for sure.

What espiga does in his free time[Eating EmP's brain] probably isn't a good idea. I mean... He's British, which means his brain's wired for PAL and your eyes are NTSC. - Will

I generally try to discuss gameplay more than narrative in my reviews. Since Japanese RPGs are primarily dungeon crawlers, I approached "FFII" from that perspective. I wanted to make the point that "vibe" (like the feeling of entering a subterrenean world with seas of lava) and mechanics are more important to this genre than narrative twists, which I thought the game emphasized too much. It seems that point came across very well.

It's ironic that this review is being pit against one of Zipp's, as I recall he was the person who picked it for RoTW. 8-)

JOSEPH VALENCIA was able to build this sig IN A CAVE…… WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!

It got picked as a wildcard entry from the RotW winners from last year. Since you hadn't been nominated at all, I wanted to get one of your reviews in. Between this one and FFV, I liked this one better. It is a pretty damn good review, too.